Chapter 13: Lord Vane Offers Elara a Seat Near the Fire

The invitation arrived on a Tuesday, which Elizabeth had learned to regard as suspicious by default.

Tuesday was when the less urgent correspondence moved through the Keep — maintenance requests, social pleasantries, the administrative flotsam of a court that generated paperwork the way other cities generated refuse. Anything arriving on a Tuesday was either genuinely inconsequential or had been deliberately dressed to appear so. Lord Vane's folded note, delivered by a page whose livery bore no house sigil, arrived on a Tuesday.

She read it twice.